'Keogh,' said Wellesley, the name coming off his lips like it tasted sour. 'That's what's on my mind.'

'That': as if Keogh were some kind of contraption or thing and not a person at all. Clarke raised an eyebrow. 'Something new on Harry?' Wellesley had been monitoring Bettley's reports himself - and keeping whatever they contained to himself.

'Maybe, and maybe not,' Wellesley answered. And rapidly, so as not to allow Clarke time to think: 'Do you know what would happen if he got his talents back?'

'Sure,' and even though Clarke did have time to think, he said it anyway: 'you'd be out of a job!'

Unexpectedly, Wellesley smiled. But it quickly faded from his face. 'It's always good to know where one stands,' he said. 'So you think he'd take over E-Branch, right?'

'With his talents he could be E-Branch!' Clarke answered. And suddenly his face lit up. 'Are you saying he's got them back?'

For a moment Wellesley didn't answer. Then: 'You were his friend, weren't you?'

'His friend?' Clarke frowned, chewed his bottom lip, began to look a little worried. No, he couldn't honestly say he'd ever been a friend of Harry's, or even that he'd wanted to be. There'd been a time, though, when he'd seen some of Harry's friends in action - and he still had nightmares about it! But at last he answered: 'We were... acquainted, that's all. See, most of Harry's real friends were sort of, well, dead.' He gave a shrug. 'That's what qualified them, sort of.'

Wellesley stared harder at him. 'And he actually did what these documents credit him with doing? Talked to the dead? Called corpses out of their graves? I mean, I'll grant you telepathy: I've seen it working in our test cubicles, and in all the criminal cases the branch has dealt with in the last six months. Even your own peculiar talent, Darcy, which is well documented even if I haven't yet seen it in action. But this?' He wrinkled his bulbous nose. 'A damned... necromancer?'

Clarke shook his head. 'A Necroscope. Harry wouldn't like you to call him a necromancer. If you've been through his file you'll know about Dragosani. He was a necromancer. The dead were frightened of him; they loathed him. But they loved Harry. Yes, he talked to them, and called them up out of their graves when that was the only way to do what he had to do. But there was no pressure involved; just for them to know he was in dire straits was often sufficient.'

Wellesley was aware that Clarke's voice had gone very quiet, and that the man himself was now quite pale. But still he pressed on. 'You were there in Hartlepool at the end of the Bodescu affair. You actually saw this thing?'

Clarke shuddered. 'I saw many... things. I smelled them, too.' He shook his head, as if to clear it of unbearable memories, and pulled himself together. 'So what's your problem, Norman? OK, so during your time here we've mainly been dealing with mundane stuff. Well, that is what we deal with, mainly. As for what Harry Keogh, Gormley, Kyle and all the others came up against that time... just hope and pray it's all done with, that's all.'

Still Wellesley seemed unconvinced. 'It couldn't have been mass hypnotism, mass illusion, some kind of trick or fraud?'

Again Clarke shook his head. 'I have this defence-mechanism thing, remember? You might be able to fool me but not it. It only gets scared when there's something there to be scared of. It doesn't run away from harmless illusions, only from real dangers. But it sure as hell propels me away from dead people and undead people and things that would chew my fucking head off!'

For a moment Wellesley seemed lost for an answer to that. Eventually he said: 'Would it surprise you to know that I was totally unaware of my own talent? All ray life, I mean, until I applied for a job here?' (This was a lie, but Clarke couldn't know it.) 'I mean, how does one know when one has a negative talent? If it was common everyday practice for people to read other people's minds, then I'd be a freak, the odd man out who couldn't do it and couldn't have it done to him. But it isn't common practice and so I had no measure for it. I only knew - or thought - that I had an interest in parapsychology, the metaphysical. Which is why I mistakenly put in for a transfer here. And then you people checked me out for suitability and discovered I kept my mind in a safe.'

Clarke looked puzzled. 'What are you trying to say?'

'I'm not sure myself. I suppose I'm trying to explain why, as the head of E-Branch, I have so much difficulty believing in what we're doing! And when you confront me with the reality of someone like Harry Keogh... Well, I mean, parapsychology is one thing, but this is supernatural!'

Clarke grinned one of his rare grins. 'So you're human after all,' he said. 'Did you think you were alone in your confusion? Why, there's not a man or woman ever worked here who hasn't known the same doubts. If I had a pound for every time I've thought about it - its ambiguities, inconsistencies and head-on contradictions - hell, I'd be rich! What, an outfit as weird as this is? Robots and romantics? Super-science and the supernatural? Telemetry and telepathy? Computerized probability patterns and precognition? Spy-satellites and scryers? Of course you're confused. Who isn't? But that's what it's all about: gadgets and ghosts!'

Wellesley was a little happier. He'd managed to get Clarke on his side for once. And with what he had in mind, that's where he had to have him. 'And teleportation?' he said. 'Was that one of Keogh's talents, too?'

Clarke nodded. "That's what we'd call it,' he said, 'but it wasn't like that to Harry. He simply used doors no one else knew were there. He'd step in a door here and... come out somewhere else. Just about anywhere else. When I wanted to recruit him in on the Perchorsk business, I went up to Edinburgh to see him. He said OK, he'd take a chance if I would. That is, if he was going up against the unknown, he wanted me to taste a little of it too. And he brought me back here through a thing he calls the Möbius Continuum. It was quite something, but nothing I'd ever want to do again.'

Wellesley sighed again and said: 'I think you're right. If he got his talents back, we'd have to offer him my job. You'd like that, right?'

Clarke shrugged.

'Don't be coy, Darcy,' Wellesley nodded, knowingly. 'It's plain as day. You'd rather have him - or anyone - as your boss than me. But what you don't seem to realize is that I'm all for it! I don't understand you or the people who work here and I don't suppose I ever will. I want out, but I know our Minister Responsible won't let me go until there's someone to replace me. You? No, because that would make it look like they made a mistake replacing you in the first place. But Harry Keogh...'

'Harry's had the best help we can give him,' Clarke said. 'We've hypnotized him, psychoanalysed him, damn near brainwashed him. But it's gone. So what can you do for him?'

'It's more what we can do for him, Darcy.'

'Goon.'

'Last night I had a long talk with the Markham girl up in Edinburgh, and -'

'If there's one part of this that I really hate,' Clarke heatedly cut in, 'it's that we've done this to him!'

' - And she advised me to speak to David Bettley,' Wellesley continued, unperturbed, 'because she's worried about Keogh. Can you understand that? She does have genuine feelings for him. It may be just a job but she is worried about him. Or maybe you think he'd be better off on his own? Well, whichever, she satisfies two needs: one in Keogh, and one in us. The need to know what's on his mind.'

'The tender art of the mindspy!' Clarke snorted.

'So I took her advice and spoke to Bettley. I got him out of bed to answer his telephone. I would have contacted him anyway, about some of his most recent reports and recordings; because in them he's given me cause to believe that Keogh is (a) about to develop some strange new talent, or (b) he's on the point of cracking up. Anyway, in the course of our conversation Bettley mentioned how Keogh first discovered this, er, Möbius thing - ?'